The 13th Annual Midwest DNA Repair Symposium (AMDRS) will take place in Toledo, OH on May 14 - 15, 2011 at the Dana Conference Center on the University of Toledo Health Science campus. The AMDRS started in 1999 at the University of Michigan and has been hosted at various universities across the Midwest every year since then. The Midwest DNA Repair Symposium was originally conceived as a forum to bring together DNA repair researchers from the Midwestern region on an annual basis to discuss ongoing research and to stimulate collaborations. DNA repair is a critical process to maintain genomic stability and remove DNA damage that if left unrepaired, could result in genomic mutations. Disruption of the DNA repair pathways has been linked to many inherited cancers as well as most, if not all sporadic cancers. Understanding these DNA repair pathways and their regulation will have a significant impact on human health. The AMDRS is now in its second decade, and since its inception, this symposia series has been extremely successful. Over the past several years, there have been significant increases in attendance and new collaborations are fostered each year. One of the important factors to this success and the increase in attendance has been to keep the costs of attending this meeting low. To achieve this goal, the organizers for each year hold the symposium at their home institutions and secure both intramural and extramural funding to cover some of the major expenses. The AMDRS is one meeting to which PI's have been able to bring their entire labs to interact with leading scientists in the field and to present their work among peers. The three principle goals of the AMDRS are: 1) to provide a venue for scientists mainly from the Midwestern states, to present and discuss current research in the field of DNA damage, repair and mutagenesis, and to provide opportunities to foster scientific collaborations. (2) To provide students, postdoctoral fellows, and beginning independent investigators the opportunity to present their work to peers and to interact with leaders in the field. (3) To provide an exceptional value of these symposia by keeping them affordable. PUBLIC HEALTH RELEVANCE: DNA repair is composed of several cellular processes that remove damaged DNA for repair. Efficient DNA repair is fundamental to the prevention of cancer, selectively disabling DNA repair pathways is essential for chemotherapeutic strategies against cancer. The dissemination of research findings at a centrally located scientific meeting that is highly focused within the field of DNA Repair is an ideal venue towards collaborative determination of the cause, diagnosis, prevention, and treatment of human cancer.